NHS England Board meeting paper 31 March 2016
- Revised guidance for CCGs on managing conflicts of interest based on the statutory guidance developed to support the delegation of primary care commissioning to CCGs.
- An audit of conflicts of interest management in ten co-commissioning arrangements was undertaken in 2015/16 (see Annex for a summary of the audit findings)
- From April 2016 NHS England will be consulting on revised statutory guidance to CCGs
- Core proposals (subject to consultation) are:
- All CCGs have a minimum of three lay members on the Governing Body,
- A conflicts of interest guardian in all CCGs to be undertaken by CCG audit chairs
- All CCGs will include an annual audit of conflicts of interest management within their internal audit plans and to publish the audit findings within their annual endof-year governance statement
- Strengthen the provisions around the management of gifts and hospitality.
- Strengthen the provisions around decision-making when a member of the group is conflicted.
- CCGs will be required to have a robust process for managing breaches within their conflict of interest policy and to publish any breaches on the CCG’s website
- All CCG staff and the staff of their member practices are to complete mandatory online conflicts of interest training, which will be provided by NHS England.
- Final guidance will be taken to NHS England Board meeting in May 2016 with a view to publishing it in early June 2016. CCGs will be required to review their processes in line with the guidance and strengthen them, where required, by the end of November 2016
- Rationalising medicines optimisation arrangements (para 28)
- To support the work around Managing Conflicts of interest around medicines across NHS England four regional medicines optimisation committees will be created and medicines evaluation will be shared across the NHS.
- “local medicines formulary committees will be far less involved in processes that the pharmaceutical industry may seek to influence. It also reduces the wasteful multiple requests for the same information being made by the NHS by the pharma sector”.
- It is expected these principles will be in place by April and the committees operational later in the year.
